May 5, 2011

Friday- Opera Cake..finally..

"Opera Cake is a type of French cake. It is made with layers of almond sponge cake (known as Joconde in French) soaked in coffee syrup, layered with ganache and coffeebuttercream, and covered in a chocolate glaze. According to Larousse Gastronomique "Opéra gateau is an elaborate almond sponge cake with a coffee and chocolate filling and icing."The cake was popularized by the French pâtisserie house Dalloyau." -Wikipedia

It took me forever to cut this cake into a diamond shape slice. Almost a diamond perhaps. {Phew} The most forever about it was making the cake itself actually. Yerp..I did it..I can finally crossed opera cake from my baking list..Hip2x hurray for me..wuhoooooo... *cheeky proud grin*

I whipped the mocha buttercream on Thursday, and thought of assembling the cake on Friday- the same date as the royal wedding day. It would be great to have a special delicacy to mark the royal wedding ceremony rite.. since it was called the wedding of the year, of the century, of a lifetime, blah blah.. But it didn't happened..err my cake I mean.. =/ You wanna know why? You see..I was glued on TV from 3pm, and after 2 hours in front of the screen, I started to feel dizzy and felt like to throw out already. I knew the wedding service would start at 6, but me being me, over-excited blah blah, didn't want to miss watching every single second of the live telecast.. and by the time Will and Kate finally tied a knot, the headache was swirling all my head already. It was terrible. [I used to be a TV junkie during my teen years..what happened to that part of myself..hihi..] So the plan had to be postponed on the next day. Long story short, I created this marvelous cake on Monday. Period. ;p

Well, it's a rich cake, enough said. Layers of almond sponge cake, with mocha buttercream and chocolate ganache in between.. heaven! You could imagine the taste your self he he.. I made an 8x8 inch square cake, too big for our family to consume it at once. I halved it and keep one half in the fridge and the other half on the freezer. We shall finish it by this month he he..

Take 1/3 of egg white and pour into almond mixture and mix it gently.. pour back almond mixture into the remaining 2/3 egg white mixture and continue to fold in gently.. dont overmix or u might deflate ur egg white..

Divide and spread into prepared pans, bake both pans at once for 20 mins in 175C. Cool completely, remove from pans, discard paper and slice it into total 4 layers.

For Coffee Syrup:
100ml hot brewed espresso - you can of course use 15g of instant coffee with 100ml hot water
100g sugar

1. Chop the chocolate into small pieces.
2. Heat cream until warm. Remove from heat and pour it over chocolate.. let it sit for 5 mins and stir
3. Add in butter and continue to stir well again.
4. Put it aside till it thickens.
Assembling

There are various way to assemble Opera, you can find many on internet. Heres my version..

Place one sheet of joconde upside down (top of the cake on bottomside).

huh...coffee,mocha,chocolate,almondare all my favourite ingredients. It looks so so so good and Im literally drooling here. I know I will never ever do it, just looking down the methods, dah berpinau mata! hehehe...

huh...coffee,mocha,chocolate,almondare all my favourite ingredients. It looks so so so good and Im literally drooling here. I know I will never ever do it, just looking down the methods, dah berpinau mata! hehehe...